Why Hollywood's Footloose remakes are just not US teenagers' Thing

Out of step ... Hollywood failed this week to draw US teenagers to the cinema with remakes such as Footloose

The teenagers whom Hollywood woos week-in, week-out voted with their feet yet again as the US box office slumped to another slow session this week. After several lacklustre weekends the studios thought they might have had something with the release of The Thing and Footloose. But guess what? The kids by and large stayed away, preferring to spend their dollars on alternative forms of entertainment. It's no wonder when you think about it: churning out anodyne remakes and prequels continues to insult the intelligence of the masses.

I've said it many times before: risk-averse studios owned by large corporations are killing US movie culture. Tyrannical studio heads and narrow-minded executives terrified of losing their jobs will always "take a punt" on superstar film-makers like Steven Spielberg, Peter Jackson, James Cameron and Ridley Scott. Most of the early trade reviews for The Adventures of Tintin: The Secret of the Unicorn, which will open across most of the world in the coming months, are enthusiastic and it's no surprise: Spielberg directed it and they threw hundreds of millions at the thing. But there is no studio that's willing to consistently gamble on engaging storytelling. Instead they focus on the bottom line and try to anchor their businesses in bankable sequels, prequels and remakes.

But what happens when the remakes and sequels start to crash? At a time when video games are operating at a level of sustained excellence that mainstream movies can only dream of, Hollywood's uninspired and cowardly decisions aren't going to cut it. Admissions are dropping, so is the cost of large-screen plasma TVs and the same will happen to 3D TVs in the coming years. The theatrical experience is already a far less compelling prospect to a generation of youngsters weaned on mobile devices than it was five years ago.

The number of theatres in the US reached saturation point well over a decade ago and the studios are rethinking and reprioritising the role of theatrical release, as they must do. Enter the rise of video on demand (VoD), an industry hot potato as evidenced by the recent spat between Universal and the theatre owners. When the studio wanted to release its upcoming Ben Stiller comedy Tower Heist on "premium VoD" 30 days after its theatrical launch at a cost of $59.99 per transaction, the theatre chains saw a threat to their release window and said they would not carry the movie, forcing red-faced Universal executives to scrap their plan.

So DreamWorks' family drama Real Steel, starring Hugh Jackman and a gang of boxing robots, held on to pole position on $16.3m and has now grossed $57.7m. Not bad after two weekends for a movie that I maintain was marketed in an unfocused manner. Was this sci-fi, a fight movie, a family drama? A bit of all three, as it turns out, leaning heaviest towards the family drama as Jackman reconnects with his son. It's actually quite engaging and is handled well by Shawn Levy, who previously directed the Night at the Museum movies and the Pink Panther remake.

They say third time's the charm but that certainly won't be the case with Fox's reunion with director David Frankel on The Big Year. The bird-watching comedy crash-landed in ninth place and you have to wonder what Jack Black, Owen Wilson and Steve Martin of all people were thinking. A pay day? Sure, but comedian mash-ups are notoriously hard to pull off and from what I hear this one misses the mark. Frankel gave the studio two $125m-plus smashes in the form of The Devil Wears Prada and Marley and Me, but the lucky streak appears to have ended, at least for now.

Finally, Pedro Almodóvar's audacious, stunning The Skin I Live In has opened through Sony Pictures Classics. It won't represent Spain in this year's foreign language Oscar race, which is quite scandalous (the honour goes to Agusti Villaronga's Black Bread), but let's hope it plays well for the arthouse crowds. It's off to a great start, opening on $231,000 from six theatres for a terrific $38,500 per-theatre average.